Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (72 page)

‘Where is he?’ insisted Apolleon. ‘The man you found in your garden?’

‘Man? You mean
men
… the travellers?’ said Helrena. ‘How do you know we caught a gang of tinkers in the grounds? And why are you wasting your time with such trivialities?’

‘
This
man,’ said Apolleon, flourishing a sheet of paper. It contained a sketch of an old bearded man who looked a lot like the vagrant who had arrived at the castle with Jacob Carnehan. ‘He is a criminal, a wily, dangerous foe of the imperium who has been on the run since before you were born.’

‘Dangerously drunk, perhaps,’ said Helrena. ‘They were in a stupor when my guards came across them and tossed them in a cage. I cannot confirm this man is the one you seek. I do not trouble myself with trespassers and itinerant squatters.’

‘You underestimate this radical at your peril,’ warned Apolleon. ‘He has as many aliases as you own slaves. This is
Sariel Teller
.
Sariel Player
.
Sariel Skel-Bane
. He has a knack of wriggling out of chains and slipping past sentries like a ghost. Send a company of soldiers to secure him… fully armed and armoured.’

‘For one dirty old man?’ said Helrena. She was looking at the nobleman as if he had lost his mind. ‘I have never even heard of this criminal?’

Apolleon was practically shaking with anger, or was it fear? Surely he wasn’t scared of the elderly hobo Duncan had glimpsed in gaol alongside Jacob Carnehan? Northhaven’s expedition was a joke; a handful of expendables dispatched to a faraway death to assuage the guilt of Duncan’s father. What in the world could scare one of the most dangerous men in the imperium so badly? ‘Do not question me. Do as I say! He should be dead. He
will
be dead!’

Helrena turned to her retinue. ‘Call the cell level, have them manacle the travellers and dispatch my private guard to bring them before us.’

Poor, unlucky Jacob Carnehan. First most of his parish had been burnt to the ground, then his son had been enslaved, now he was going to be thrown to the not-so-tender mercies of the Vandian secret police. Duncan decided to idle behind the nearest helo and see how matters played out. Helrena didn’t look pleased in the slightest. Not at her rude treatment at the hands of a supposed ally, nor at the implications that the secret police had an unlimited number of informers among her staff. Maybe the old vagrant Apolleon hunted had been hiding in exile inside one of the empire’s neighbours when Jacob’s craft landed for supplies, and the outlaw had seized his opportunity to join the expedition? If so, his urge to see his homeland again was going to cost him his life. But would it cost the pastor’s, too? Duncan sighed. He had hoped to help Jacob Carnehan return home. But if Apolleon got his hooks into the Weylander, then Carter’s father would be far beyond Duncan’s help.

A soldier returned a second later, whispering in the princess’s ear. Helrena’s face turned white at the news. ‘All the travellers are gone! And Hesia with them! Is this Circae’s doing?’

Apolleon roared a yell of anguish at the hangar’s roof. ‘I warned you! Seal off the castle, lock down the landing field. Search every turret and room, every inch and corner of the castle until you find him.’

It wasn’t just the head of the secret police that was discomfited by the news of the escape. Duncan slipped out of the hangar, his walk becoming a sprint as he ran across the gardens and cliff defences, desperate to find his sister clearing her head in the open air. But Willow was nowhere to be found. All around him sirens began to wail. On the battlements of the wall facing the city’s towers and spires, across the hangars and the hulking concrete fortifications of the Castle of Snakes. Duncan checked the small woodland, the Stone Garden, the walks along the cliff defences, the gun emplacements facing the whipping sea. Patrols began to comb the grounds alongside him. Duncan was still searching half an hour later when a guardsman came dashing past and recognised him, stopping to jab a finger back towards the castle.

‘Orders from the princess. Head to the airfield and find the transport Paetro’s riding.’

‘And then what?’

‘Climb in the helo alongside him. Apolleon is sending his personal warship to the landing island. We’re stripping the castle of every able-bodied man and joining his people on board to chase a skyjacked ship.’

‘Skyjacked?’ Duncan’s gut twisted at the news, all the horrifying implications flashing through his mind at once.
Willow
.
Damn you!

‘One of our supply runners has vanished, its pilots found stuffed dead under the field’s fuel tanks. As soon as we know what direction it’s headed, we’re following.’

Duncan turned away so that the man couldn’t see the painful web of emotions playing across his face, and then scurried towards the castle. He could guess which direction the stolen ship would be heading.
The sky mines
. And he knew why Willow was missing, too. In her fit of jealous pique, she’d finally found a way to ruin everything Duncan had achieved here. He’d won Willow her freedom and
this
was how she repaid him? And now he was being ordered to hunt down his own sister, while her selfishness meant Paetro would be forced to stalk and shoot his own daughter, all in the name of duty. And for what? So Carter Carnehan could enjoy a pitiful last hour in the company of his father before the entire might of the imperium bore down to slaughter a ragtag band of slaves and outlaws?
Willow
. Even here, the Landor name and the Landor line could reach out to curse him. He felt like letting rip to the sky with a similar roar of rage to Apolleon’s. Instead he sprinted towards the airfield, towards the whipping noise of a dozen squadrons of helos rising into the sky to start the pursuit.
You’ve brought this on yourself, Willow. Everything that happens. It’s all on you now.

Jacob was finally able to rise out of the padded chair in the cockpit, muscles aching and pulsing in protest. He had never thought it possible to travel so fast that his body became as weighted as if he had been recast in lead, the air itself exploding as their vessel speared above the imperium. At least the extreme speed had stopped Sheplar appearing from alongside Sariel in the cargo hold, to annoy the female pilot with endless questions over the ship’s design and the function of every knob and switch on her control panel.

‘I’m decelerating,’ announced Hesia. ‘Dropping filters over our engine intakes.’

Jacob saw why. A rolling grey cloud lurked beyond the cockpit’s canopy, the patter of ash and dust starting against their airframe and growing louder. ‘Sweet mercy! What is that?’

‘A proto-eruption,’ said Willow. ‘They can rumble on for weeks before the stratovolcano starts to blow in earnest.’

‘And my son is on a mining station tethered above
that
?’ The land they’d already passed over was bad enough. Scoured of all greenery, empty river beds and mile after mile of smoking rock. Only the occasional ground-based mining operation to break up the landscape, vast steel fortresses on tracks slowly picking their way through the volcano’s lesser mineral fall. The blackened hellish vista seemed limitless, even at the almost inconceivable speeds they had been hitting.

‘That’s why the empire uses slaves here,’ said Willow. The girl was so matter of fact and cold she made Jacob grimace. He’d had a chance to have a closer look at her now. Willow was a lot gaunter than he remembered her. Her brother had regained his frame living high on the hog with the Vandians but there wasn’t much of a healthy sheen about Willow Landor. She still had the hungry, quick eyes of a slave; flitting around the Vandians’ ship, restlessly searching for the next threat. He had seen that look before, among the starved peasants of the Burn. Cannon fodder who expected nothing more from a new encounter than theft, murder or a flogging.

‘Dropping altitude,’ announced Hesia, and Jacob felt the deck fall away from his boots. ‘I’m hugging the deck. Trading speed for stealth. We shouldn’t meet any slave patrol ships flying so low. They’ll have gone for height, trying to get over the worst of
that
.’

‘Just take us to the station,’ said Willow.

‘And there are no guards in the sky mines?’ asked Jacob. ‘No soldiers?’

‘Not unless the princess managed to send them ahead of us,’ said Hesia. She indicated the lifeless plains flashing past below. ‘Hunger and thirst make the best sentry of all. No work, no water.’

And his son had been marooned out here all this time? They might as well have stranded Carter in the central circle of hell.

‘Carter will be safe,’ said Willow, picking up on his worries. But she sounded too much as though she were trying to convince herself.

‘I can sense my child,’ said Khow, excited. ‘Kerge is close. It is as though I could reach outside and touch him.’

Hesia jerked her thumb towards the hatch at the rear of the cockpit. ‘Go down to the cargo hold and bring your kite-flying mountain man up here. I need him to sit on the scope and keep an eye behind us.’ Willow heeded the pilot’s instructions and left to retrieve the Rodalian.

Jacob felt a bite of fear. ‘We’re being pursued?’

‘Not yet, not the way I’m bouncing us about. But they’ll piece our route together soon enough, if only from plantation owners arriving at garrisons and demanding compensation for us stampeding herds and shattering farmhouse windows.’

Their jouncing grew worse, the bombardment of grit swelling louder and larger. Hesia activated a steel mesh that folded down across the cockpit glass. The ship’s triangular wings were visible beyond the canopy, shrugging off debris like a cloud of rain.

‘We’ll hold?’ asked Jacob.

Hesia shrugged. ‘We’re not rated for the dead zone. This bird was scheduled to fly to the house’s holdings in the eastern provinces. Munitions and weapons for our line of forts out there. Just an engine, long-range fuel tanks and a large cargo hold welded together. Our armour’s to protect us against rifle fire from the ground, not this. There’s one piece of good news: if we’re holed, the weight of explos­ives on board means that at least we’ll have an instant death.’

‘I haven’t travelled this far to be blown to pieces an hour before I reach my son.’

‘No? Well, the people in the capital might not care about a few runaway slaves and foreigners, but I’ve betrayed my house twice. For me, there’s no distance Helrena Skar won’t travel to settle that score.’

Jacob could see the stratovolcano’s lower slopes moving towards them through the dark shower, sandwiched between the ground below and the black clouds above. If this was just the opening salvo, how bad would the storm grow when the volcano moved towards a full eruption? The volcano’s rise came closer and closer. Hesia banked her craft with a view to climbing towards the sky mine.

‘Manling!’ said Khow from the back of the cockpit. He pointed out of a side-port towards the ground.

Jacob went to the gask and followed the direction of his leathery finger. Khow had picked out a feature by the base of the volcano. A circle of menhirs below, the ancient standing stones seeming at home in this bleak, deadly land. ‘I see them.’

‘Will the stones activate for Sariel,’ wondered Khow, ‘without the assistance of the great diviner?’

Jacob glanced towards the cargo hold. He could hear Willow and Sheplar climbing up the metal stairs. It was a good question. With more riding on the outcome than Jacob wanted to dwell on right now. Sariel hadn’t been himself since they had arrived in Vandia. His stories had dried up, few tall tales and boasts. The bard had drawn into himself. It reminded Jacob of Carter’s brothers in the last days of their fever. You always knew you were in trouble when a sick child stopped complaining, growing worryingly silent.

‘And even if the stones are still active,’ added Khow, ‘if Sariel cannot control them properly, we could end up anywhere in the world.’

Jacob cleared his throat. It had turned dry and worried inside the Vandian vessel. ‘Anywhere in the world that isn’t the empire. I can live with that, friend.’

Sheplar took the gask’s seat, following Hesia’s instructions for operating the radar. Kerge left for the cargo hold to help calm Sariel. Relying on the unstable bard to escape Vandia? Jacob prayed the gask proved successful.

Hesia had flown supply runs to the sky mines often enough to be able to locate the station, even in the thick hot clouds and debris. A couple of minutes later the station came into view through the squall of gas and super-heated debris.

‘Trying to raise their radio room,’ said Hesia. ‘No response. It must be down for maintenance.’

Jacob looked out of the canopy at the massive rock emerging from the burning soot, blue power lamps glowing on antigravity stones studding its sides. It wasn’t a single rock outside, but three of them tethered together by a web of steel cables. Willow joined him by the window. ‘We’re in luck. No ships moored up. Sometimes the Vandians take shelter if there’s an eruption on the way.’

Hesia pulled back on her flight stick. ‘We’re too big to land in their hangars and too small to dock alongside. I’ll set us down on the station roof. I can see some slaves waiting for us topside.’

‘We’re not on the resupply schedule,’ said Willow.

‘Let them wonder,’ said Jacob.

‘Most of our people will be busy preparing,’ said Willow. ‘We chase an eruption’s tail into the clouds to try to stake the best rocks. There’s a lot of competition between rival houses for the best strikes. It’s a bloodbath.’

Jacob had the feeling matters would be getting a lot bloodier today. Their reception committee retreated on the station’s surface, the ship’s engines rotating into landing position and blasting rock before it settled down.

‘The man at the front is Thomas Gale,’ said Willow, gazing at the ground from the cockpit. ‘He administers the station for Helrena Skar.’

‘Then he can administer my son to me,’ growled Jacob.

Jacob left the cockpit and climbed down to the cargo hold. He and the others crowded around the back of the chamber, surrounded by metal crates lashed to the steel deck with black straps. Hesia dropped the loading ramp. A wave of heat flooded in from outside, choking dust and ash drifting in. Jacob stepped outside, covering his mouth and nose with his hand. It was worse outside, dust obscuring the air vents and stairs down into the station. The man that Willow had identified as the chief slave raised a hand in greeting and came forward with his entourage following slowly, figures obscured by the squall. They probably thought that Hesia’s vessel had landed to ride out the worst of the storm. Would they be happy to hear that he’d come for Northhaven’s abducted slaves?
Easier for them if they learn to collaborate with a new master.
A few trustees with wooden clubs weren’t going to stop him now.